John Gerzema is a marketing whiz, WSJ best selling author and President of BrandAsset Consulting, overseeing strategy across the Young & Rubicam Companies, Board Advisor/Wanderfly

Gerzema has spent his career creating and guiding the brand strategies of many of our household names: McDonald’s, BMW, Coca-Cola, United Airlines, Holiday Inn and more. Today, as Chief Insights Officer for marketing giant Young & Rubicam, he combines his expertise with the information reaped from Y&R’s Brand Asset Valuator (an enormous database of brands) to understand and anticipate change in the intricate world of commerce.

Check out Gerzema’s personal blog for more information on this marketing guru.

Gerzema uses data, analysis and extensive experience to identify trends and develop innovative and “outside the box” approaches to advertising. He is co-author of The Brand Bubble, a new book that advocates change as the best strategy for brand management in today’s market. This is not his first avant-garde move either –he was one of the early adopters of account planning in American advertising, a method that places the consumer front and center in the branding process. After speaking at TEDxKC, Gerzema penned a second book called Spend Shift based on the premises of his talk on the changing habits of the post-crisis consumer.